Albion Harris Bicknell

Although best known for his portraits and historical subjects, Albion Harris Bicknell also painted and etched still lifes and landscapes. Born in Turner, Maine, he moved to Boston and studied art at the Lowell Institute around 1855. From about 1860 to1862, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Thomas Couture. In 1864 Bicknell established a studio in Boston and began exhibiting at the Boston Athenaeum annually. He helped found the Allston Club in 1866. After moving to Malden, Massachusetts, in 1875, he began experimenting with the monotype process. By 1881, he had completed at least fifty such prints, and in that year he exhibited at the J. Eastman Chase Gallery in Boston and the Union League Club in New York. His monotypes were also shown at the Salmagundi Sketch Club at the National Academy of Design in 1882. In the 1880s Bicknell taught sketching classes during the summer. He turned to watercolor in 1895, but after 1900 his art activity gradually decreased.

Joann Moser Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1997)